Monthly Archives: October 2011

Here we go…just landed in London England. It’s amazing to be back here after 18 months and I’m sure it’s going to bring out the creative juices like before. There is so much to write about now, good and bad. Songs come out of the air like magic but they have to have a trigger point…something inside your life or outside of your life which touches you very deeply. Then the song comes and you realise that some spirit or other has picked up your inner feelings and translated them into words and music.

Mostly I have been moved by the reaction to my first bunch of live gigs in Aus playing all my own material. People have been wonderful. They have cried, they have laughed, they have cheered…and it’s all about their reaction.

Songwriting – in fact music – is something you do every day. You have to do it. You started long before anyone offered you fifty bucks. It’s not about a career. It’s a habit. A drug. An obsession.

My work now for Deaf Children Australia only serves to make me feel even luckier every day. I’m blessed with good health, good ears and a voice. I cherish all those things and feel grateful every day.

I’m now, in Aussie terms, just down the road from all the changes happening in North Africa….the arab spring whatever the fuck that is. It’s a cry for freedom. It’s impressive, it’s depressing, it’s agonisingly hard for them. It feels real and close here.

Everyone in the West is moaning. Moaning about the economy, moaning about their jobs, moaning about the state of the music industry….get some perspective here guys. Get real. Look down the road at North Africa. Look at Burma. Look at Haiti….we don’t have any problems worth moaning about.

London is sunny and beautiful. People reach out to me every day saying nice things about me. I don’t deserve it but I’m not fake enough to say that it doesn’t help me and touch me and renew me. It does all of those things.